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Title: Signaling in the Market for GED Graduates: Empirical Evidence from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth
Resulting in 1 citation.
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Gifford, Kirk D. |
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Signaling in the Market for GED Graduates: Empirical Evidence from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth Ph.D. Dissertation, Washington State University, 1996 Cohort(s): NLSY79 Publisher: UMI - University Microfilms, Bell and Howell Information and Learning Keyword(s): Continuing Education; Education, Secondary; GED/General Educational Diploma/General Equivalency Degree/General Educational Development; Human Capital; Labor Market Outcomes; Quits; Retirement/Retirement Planning; Self-Employed Workers; Tests and Testing; Training, On-the-Job The General Educational Development (GED) is becoming increasingly popular as a means to high school certification. As sponsor of the GED, the American Council on Education markets a GED credential as equivalent to a diploma obtained through the traditional high school route. The council suggests that GED graduates are comparable to high school graduates in terms of higher educational and vocational success. Recent economic research has generated considerable controversy over this claimed equivalency. This dissertation develops a game theoretical, signaling model that describes the market for high school credentials and empirically tests the model to investigate the differences between the labor market outcomes of traditional high school students and the labor market outcomes of GED credentialed individuals. The data for the empirical analysis come from 1979-93 waves of the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth (NLSY). Standard regression analysis is used, with corrections for existing selection biases. I find evidence to suggest that GED test takers are a heterogenous group. Those who take the exam shortly after dropping out of high school, signal high ability to the market and are paid a high wage, while those who take the exam later in life are paid a lower wage. Specifically, examining a sample of NLSY females, I find that those who take the GED early have comparable wages and work slightly more than those who graduate from a traditional high school. A sample of NLSY males suggests that early GED test takers do not fare as well as their high school counterparts, but do better than dropouts who don't take the exam. For males, these age-at-examination-date effects are eliminated when I correct for selection bias, suggesting that the GED is not an investment in human capital, but acts purely as a signal of ability and motivation. Conversely, the distinction between signaling and human capital development is not as clear for females. |
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Bibliography Citation
Gifford, Kirk D. Signaling in the Market for GED Graduates: Empirical Evidence from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth. Ph.D. Dissertation, Washington State University, 1996. |